


Disconnect

by DesireeArmfeldt



Category: due South
Genre: Backstory, F/M, Friendship, Love, M/M, Navel-Gazing, POV Third Person, Sex, Sexuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-22
Updated: 2016-02-22
Packaged: 2018-05-22 15:41:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6085374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesireeArmfeldt/pseuds/DesireeArmfeldt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As far as Fraser can judge, sex has little to do with love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Disconnect

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Problem with Sex](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5219777) by [DesireeArmfeldt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesireeArmfeldt/pseuds/DesireeArmfeldt). 



> This was going to be a snippet for [ds-snippets](http://ds-snippets.livejournal.com), on the prompt "Heavens above/Can this sticky stuff really be love?", but it got too long.
> 
> Part of a set of fics on the same prompt, thematically related, not necessarily set in the same 'verse (though they could be).
> 
> Note: Possibly this should have a tag having to do with the asexuality/aromantic spectrum, but nothing I could think of quite felt right.

As far as Fraser can judge, sex has little to do with love.

Admittedly, his sexual experience is almost nil, but that isn’t entirely a coincidence. It isn’t that he doesn’t get physically aroused by the swell of breasts, the casual brush of a muscular body against his own, an expressive voice. But he doesn’t know what to _do_ with those disconnected, disconcerting, sensations. They generally don’t engender any emotion in him other than embarrassment and the desire to retreat from an awkward situation.

As for love. . .

He loved Innusiq with the thoughtless, focused devotion of childhood. They did everything together; freely shared thoughts and possessions.

His adolescent passion for Mark was the same, only fiercer. Possibly that intensity was borne of sexual impulse, but it never occurred to him to so much as kiss Mark. Rather, he dreamed of becoming hockey stars together, or journeying across ice fields on an important mission, or dying in each other’s arms.

He admired Eric and yearned to impress him in return, and more: to crack the wall around his private soul, the one with the sign reading _No White Men Welcome._

In retrospect, Julie Frobisher was the first person to believe that because he loved her, he must want to have sex with her. Unlike many he has known since, she kept that belief to herself until long after their ways had parted.

By contrast, Steve McDonald was the first person to make it explicitly, heart-searingly plain to Fraser that having sex did not necessarily imply love or the desire to be beloved. He also taught Fraser that the kind of best-friendship he’d shared with Innusiq was only for children.

Fraser and Victoria came as close to each other as it’s possible to get, skin to skin and soul to soul at the boundary of death. Their bond was so deep and consuming that sex was beside the point. It’s true that when they finally did have sex, it stirred feelings so intense that he briefly thought that, at last, he understood how the rest of the world felt. But even so, that was the least part of the story.

Ray Vecchio, and Ray Kowalski after him, demonstrated how wrong Steve had been about friendship. Though neither partnership has been precisely easy, Fraser has been twice blessed with companionship, loyalty, and devotion given and received in equal measure; the slotting together of two disparate lives; and a tacitly shared assumption that whither one goes, thither the other. Despite their physical expressions of affection for him, neither Ray has ever seemed to consider Fraser as a potential sexual partner, which is a relief on the rare occasions when he thinks of it. He can’t imagine that sex would do anything other than complicate, and perhaps weaken beyond bearing, the love he has come to rely on.

And so, sex being neither necessary nor sufficient to mutually fulfilling love, Fraser finds it no great hardship simply to go without. Though he does occasionally wonder whether love that encompasses sex might be fundamentally different—or better—he isn’t curious enough to justify the gamble.


End file.
